Letters from the Brown Jug

Monday February 7, 1944   Dear Marie:   Received your welcome letter and hope you will excuse the slow answer. I just came back from Los Angeles where I spent the weekend with Perry and Hal. Perry has a nice little place in the San Fernando Valley. He is close to a school and sure has a dandy location. He has built a small barn and a little corral for his horse. He is also going to build a roping pen.   Yesterday Hal came over with his horse in his trailer. Then he and Perry and I went over to a big place called Rancho Alamo. There Perry clipped Hal’s horse for him and that white horse was sure mighty sleek when he got finished. Hal is going to have an audition with Universal Pictures this week.   On the way back we stopped at Northridge and watched an amateur horse show there for a little while. Later in the evening we took a drive over the Coastal Range of the Santa Monica Mountains. We went over a summit at 7000 feet. The cars on the road at the bottom of the moun...

Somewhere in England Tuesday, May 2, 1944   Dear Grandma:   Hope this letter finds you and the tribe in the best of health. As for me I’m about the same as ever. The English over here are very tidy people about there farms and livestock. Most of the farms look more like parks than farms. This is mostly sheep country but I have also seen some fat beef cattle. A lot of Black Angus. Most of the farm horses are very big animals and nearly all I’ve seen were worked single. There mostly of the English Shire breed, bays with bald faces and stocking legs and the tails docked and not over a foot long. There are many Clydesdale horses too, marked the same but much larger. They have so much hair around their legs from the knee down and heavy haired fetlocks that we call them feather legged so and so’s.   The grass and trees are very green here now but the weather stays cold. We dress warmer here now than we would at home in mid-winter.   All auto traffic is opposite to ours and...

  Somewhere in England Monday, May 29, 1944   Dear Gram:   Received your letter today and sure was glad to get it. I am in the best of health and hope you the tribe are all the same. We have had very nice weather the last few days and I sure hope it continues. We have been working pretty steady and I haven’t been able to get a day off as yet.   There is an old castle near here but it’s nearly all ruins. It’s said to have been built six hundred years ago. All that is still standing is a few walls. The moat is still around it where they used to cross with draw bridges.   Some of the houses have straw roofs and they claim they really turn the water. A lot of the houses are very old. Some have a white stone inserted among the bricks over the front door. They have the year in which the house was built inscribed on the stone. I have seen houses built in the sixteenth & seventeenth century.   There is a fellow near here who has a nice 3 year old black & wh...

Thursday June 22, 1944   Dear Marie,   Received your welcome letter today and was sure glad to hear from you. Glad that you liked the pictures. I didn’t get to see them myself as I had them taken on my last trip home.   Yes, I see that the Browns and Cards are sure doing ok. We get the Stars and Stripes every day. That is a paper published daily for Allied troops. So you see we get the news pretty fast. We get up to the minute sport news on the sports page. We got a new G.I. recording machine today. It’s also a radio. We got a bunch of records and transcribed radio programs on records. It sure has volume and you can hear it very plain a quarter of mile away. We have an American radio station over here and get all the up to date radio programs daily on a rebroadcast. Also get the news flashes every hour.   Well Marie I hope you and the tribe are all ok. I am fine and hope I can stay that way. So long.   Love Mel

July 11, 1944   Howdy Dude:   How’s my ole pardner today? In good shape I hope. As for me I’m in the best of health and doing ok. That is, for still being in England.   They say that England is having the worst drought since 1918, but if this is a dry spell, I’d sure hate to be over here in a wet year as it sure been raining pretty steady as far as I can see. Of course I’m just a “bloomin” Yank and maybe I don’t see things the way the English do. We’ve been playing baseball when we get a nice day. The weather is plenty damp though and most of the boys including myself are complaining of a sore arm. I’ve been playing a lot of Snooker since I’m over here. The pockets are sure smaller than on a pool table and it took a little while to get the knack of sinking the balls. These three old ponies are anxious for someone to come and take them home and turn them loose and pardner I got the same thing in mind. So long for now.   Your pardner Brown Jug   P.S. Howdy to the ...

July 11, 1944   Dear Dad:   Received your letter of the 29 th  today. I’m glad you like the Fathers Day card. It’s good to hear that you are doing so well since you went to work for Earl. I was sure all of your old customers would stay with you. I know they will like to do business with Earl to as he sure is a guy you can’t help from liking.   I am fine and we have been playing ball on the good days but there aren’t too many of them, as they sure have plenty rain over here. The other day we got two dozen new baseballs and six new bats. Also three new bases. We made a new home plate and are really equipped to play ball if we can just keep the weather right. I heard from Noxons kid & he says the old ponies out at the ranch are plenty fat & snorty including mine. I guess them bronc’s will be plenty hard to set when I get back, after running loose so long. I hope I can sit em as close as this feller Ive drawn here on this old snake crazy pony.   So long ole ...

August 19, 1944   Dear Grandmother:   Received your very nice birthday card and sure thank you for it. I am fine and hope the tribe is all well. Dad wrote me about the Dude cutting his hand and Marie taking a fall and hurting her eye. I hope this letter finds them both fully recovered. I sure have fallen behind in my letter writing and am going to do my best to catch up tonight. I would like you to personally thank all of your kids for remembering me on my birthday.   It is quite interesting the way these French put up hay. After the hay is cut and cured they make little bundles out of it and tie a few strands of long stems of hay around it. Then they load it on a one horse cart and stack it about ten feet high. Of course the old horse pulls up along side of the barn and they pitch it in bundle by bundle just like wheat. Well that’s about all for now. So long and keep writing.   Love, Mel Taken at the Fresnay-sur-Sarthe, France, on the "Red Ball" highway in August, 1...